The Israeli Job: “Fixing” traffic control to liberate $1.2B in lost commuting time

Who hasn’t been stuck seething at an interminable red light with zero cross-traffic?

When this happened one time too many to Uriel Katz, he co-founded Israel-based, Palo Alto, California– headquartered tech startup NoTraffic in 2017. The company claims its cloud- and artificial intelligence-based traffic control system can halve rush-hour times in dense urban areas, reduce annual CO 2 emissions by a half-billion tons in places like Phoenix/Maricopa County, and slash transportation budgets by 70 percent. That sounded mighty free-lunchy, so I got NoTraffic’s VP of strategic partnerships, Tom Cooper, on the phone.

Here’s how it works: Sensors perceive, identify, and analyze all traffic approaching each intersection, sharing data to the cloud. Here, light timing and traffic flow is adjusted continuously, prioritizing commuting patterns, emergency and evacuation traffic, a temporary parade of bicycles—whatever. Judicious allocation of “green time” means no green or walk-signal time gets wasted.

I assumed such features had long since evolved from the tape-drive traffic control system Michael Cain’s team sabotaged in Rome to pull off The Italian Job in 1969. Turns out that while most such systems’ electronics have evolved, their central intelligence and situational adaptability have not.